The present invention relates generally to apparatus and methods for placing or installing reinforced concrete piles into the ground.
Pilings are often used to support buildings, bridges, antenna structures, or other structures, for example. Conventionally, reinforced concrete piles are placed in the ground by one of two methods. The first method places a precast reinforced concrete pile into the ground by using a pile driver and hammering the pile into the ground. The second method places a reinforced concrete pile into the ground by drilling a circular hole using an auger, removing the soil, placing a pre assembled circular, for example, steel reinforcing rod cage into the hole and pouring wet concrete into the hole to encase the steel reinforcing rod cage.
More particularly, conventional helical pilings typically include one or more helical screw(s) or helices. The shaft is rotated to force the helical screw downwardly into the earth. The piling is screwed downwardly until the screw is seated in a region of soil sufficiently strong to support the load from the structure that it is to support. An additional piling is attached or spliced to a previously screwed piling to increase the depth of the overall piling. To accomplish this, adjacent round or circular ends of the pilings are reconfigured to have a generally square shape with rounded corners. The adjacent ends are configured to have male and female cross-sections so that the piles slide together forming a telescoping joint and are spliced to make a continuous piling.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,814,525 issued to Whitsett discloses conventional piling apparatus and installation methods. The Whitsett patent discloses in its Abstract, for example, that an “in-situ pile apparatus includes a helical anchor to which a plurality of elongated generally cylindrically shaped sections can be added. Each of the sections has a specially shaped end portion for connecting to another section. An internal drive is positioned in sections inside the bore of each of the connectable pile sections. The internal drive includes enlarged sections that fit at the joint between pile sections. In one embodiment, the internal drive can be removed to leave a rod behind that defines reinforcement for an added material such as concrete. The rod also allows for a tension rod connection from the anchor tip to an upper portion attachment point.”
Conventional composite helical pipe piling apparatus is distributed by MacLean Dixie HFS. This piling apparatus could include reinforcing rods and a concrete core within the steel pipe piles hollow inside, however, the steel pipe piling would remain in the ground.
It would be desirable to have a reinforced concrete piling apparatus that may be installed in the ground without requiring a pile driver or an auger.